German minister securing US authorities collaboration on VW dieselgate investigation

Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s transport minister, has pledged joint collaboration with his US peer in order to quickly find everything about Volkswagen Ag’s cheating of diesel emissions tests.

Dobrindt on Monday encountered his counterpart, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to talk about the American investigation of VW – which was initiated once the carmaker admitted to using illegal software to cheat on diesel emissions tests. The German minister will also have an encounter with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy during his stay in the US. “I’ve offered to the U.S. government to regularly brief them on the latest state of the investigation,” commented the politician, a minister in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. “Additionally, I’ve invited experts from U.S. agencies to come to Germany and check out the technical details of our examinations.”

Both the EPA and the California Air Resources Board announced back on September 18 that Germany’s VW AG, the largest European automaker, duped regulators with a so-called defeat device to pass emissions tests. Since the admission that it not only cheated on US tests but that up to 11 million autos around the world were equipped with the illegal software the company has been engulfed in the worst business crisis in its 78-year history. The two transportation ministers also talked about autonomous vehicles or the technology that enables communication between cars and infrastructure to coordinate and possibly avoid accidents, as well as the drive to lower polluting emissions, read a Transportation Department statement.